JOB DETAILS:
The USAID/ Strategic Information Technical Support (SITES) Project is a five-year project (2018-2023) that was awarded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to Social & Scientific Systems Inc. (SSS). The purpose of the SITES Project is to facilitate, promote and enhance evidence—based programming and reporting in Uganda’s health system.
USAID/ SITES Project works collaboratively with other United States Government—supported implementing partners (IPs), the Uganda Ministry of Health, other Government Ministries and institutions in conducting these activities.
USAID/SITES has drawn up a comprehensive workplan that outlines priority activities for the tl1i.rd year of operation, that aim to strengthen the evidence base for PEPFAR and Family health programming and program performance improvement, as well as data quality improvement in national and USAID specific performance monitoring systems.
To support implementation of some critical activities and analyses required to inform the Family health program, USAID/ SITES is seeking services of a consultant to work with technical officers at SITES and other stakeholders, and conduct the activities / studies, analyze data, writing reports, and dissemination. For this FY, the specific activities for which professional technical assistance services are sought are as follows:
Estimation and Evaluation of Family Planning use at national and subnational levels in Uganda
Purpose of Consultancy: The consultant will support the SITES project team to review existing sources of data and obtain estimates of the contraceptive prevalence rate and metl1od-specific prevalence in Uganda as well as to identify viable options for annual monitoring of the family planning program at the national, regional and district level.
Justification: The Family planning programs have in the last few decades relied solely on large scale surveys to estimate PP use and monitor Family planning program at population level. However, due to additional global reporting requirements such as FP2020, more frequent data reports were required from national programs, which led to more frequent surveys such as Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020} surveys. Uganda has been submitting annual updates of core FP indicators to the global Family Pla.n.n.i.ng 2020 [FP2020) initiative using projected data from the last UDI-IS or PMA202O survey. Most of these submitted estimates are at national level therefore leaving out the regional district level estimates where most of the subnational planning and service provision takes place. Although service statistics data for family planning are of insufficient accuracy to use as stand—alone like survey data, data on contraceptive commodities distributed to clients, family planning service visits, and current users can be used accurately when combined with survey data in FPET tools to estimates the trends of annual CPR between the years of surveys.
Although some FP indicators are collected annually at district level through the Lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) surveys’, these surveys have often not included all districts. In the same vein, large investments have been made by Government of Uganda and partners in the collection and improvement of routine family planning service statistics collected at health facilities and reported in the nation Health management information systems. The broad two groups of available FP service statistics data are service visits data and commodities dispensed to clients’ data. The current users’ estimates can be obtained through additional adjustments to the service visits data.
ln the provision of district level support, USAID site level Implementing partners need district level indicators to plan as well as monitor the response of their as well as other stakeholder support. Given the need for district level planning and tracking, USAID/ SITES is interested in obtaining reliable annual district population level estimates of core FP outcome indicators through the use of available commonly recorded and reported data elements in the national Health management information systems [HMIS] service statistics data. .

Specific Tasks: This SOW/ToRs identifies 6 distinct tasks that will be contracted jointly as one task given that some are derivatives of the other. The specific tasks comprise of:
• Provide district level estimates and confidence limits of mCPR using the Estimated methods, for F'Ys FY16} 17 18/19 and FY19/20 using the Service Statistics to Estimated Modern Use {S5 to EMU) tool and the Family Planning Estimation Tool (FPET). The mathematical approaches used should adjust for the method duration and frequency needed to obtain a full year of pregnancy protection, as well as adjust for the proportion of FP users that access facilities that report} do not report into the national HMIS as well as proportion of PP users who access services from small drug shops/ private providers that do not submit any of their return to the national eHMIS.
• Using the FPET, obta.in district and regional level estimates of mCPR as stated above, Unmet need for family planning and demand for FP satisfied by modern methods for the three years and present these in various formats that should include Geographical information system maps.
• Assess and provide coinmentary and technical guidance for USAID / SITES on how well this regional and district level approximations of the modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) using the SS to eMU and FPET derived from service statistics track survey—based mCPR estimates
• Provide a recommendation of what part(s) of the Service statistics data perform better than others such that they should be identified for tracking purposes going forward.
• Provide a comparison of the FPET derived mCPR estimates and those obtain from LQAS and offer scientific commentary any differences observed and recommendations going forward.
• Provide periodic interim updates to stakeholders on the status of the agreed tasks.

Deliverables
• An inception report and presentation with detailed Ghant chart of processes and deliverables time lines
• An analytic report and presentation outlining Key FP indicators at National, regional and district levels, including age disaggregation, appropriate confidence limits and higl1.lighting where the Uganda MOH, USAID and partners need to maintain effort, scale —up efforts or scale-down efforts / focus going forward.
• Medium term projections of key family planni.ng indicators and resulting impacts with variable Family planning program inputs.
• An analytic report highlighting merits, demerits of various service statistics data sources, comparisons with LQAS results as well as specific recommendations for obtaining district level CPR estimates going forward.

Experience:
• This short-term technical assistance will be provided by a seasoned demographer or public health consultant conversant with the Uganda health system the Uganda National Family Planning costed implementation plan, Family planning program evaluation, demoproj and other mathematical modelli.ng and projections for FP programming.
• At least 8 years of working experience in the technical area of Family planning programs, at least 5 of which should have been in strategic information, Operational research and or Monitoring and evaluation
• Experience with management and analysis of Family planning data including mathematical modelling, detailed statistical analysis and triangulation
• Experience with USAJD or other large donor supported activities in Uganda
• Experience with supporting national, regional, district and facility Family planning programs and services

Educational/Professional Qualifications:
A minimum of a Master degree in Public Health, Demography, Epidemiology, Statistics or related discipline.

Knowledge and Competencies
• Strong analytical, writing and presentation skills
• Strong leadership and facilitation skills
• Knowledgeable and conversant with Uganda’s Family Planning Costed implementation plan, FP data/ information including HMIS, surveillance, population survey and other data
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a team,
• Ability work under tight deadlines, self—driven with minimum supervision to meet defined objectives
• Ability to work with complex and competing environment involving public and private sectors, NGOs, implementing partner and donors;
• Knowledgeable about FP
• CIP and national and USAID FP indicators
Supervision
The consultant will be supervised by the CE&I Team Lead or his designee but will work closely with the program teams at USAID FHT and SITESS

To apply please send your CV and cover letter by email to:

 sitesprojectconsultants@s-3.com
Only preselected applicants will be contacted and selection will be done on a rolling basis.